How to make baby food.. Yes, it is THAT easy :)

 Many people have been asking me about making my own baby food, how hard is it, what recipes do you use.. I like to use this website:

http://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com/babyfirstfoods.htm

Feeding your baby homemade baby food is easy and is also an incredibly inexpensive, cost effective way to begin introducing solid foods and create healthy eating habits. It allows you to take advantage of seasonal fruits/veggies and also saves you a lot of money!! These pears were on sale at cub today, 88 cents/pound can't beat that!!

 

Today we're making pears :). Wash the pears well.

Cut the pears.

I personally find if you dice them a little smaller it makes it easier when you get to pureeing.

Put the pears diced in a skillet, add about 1-2 cups of water. It is important to keep the bottom of the skillet covered in a little water, otherwise the pears can burn. Stir occasionally.

My little guy loves to help!

Sautee the pears until they are tender. Test with a fork. Once they are done let them cool.

Add them to the food processor, you can use a blender too if you'd like. Next you just press go! It's that easy. You'll want to stop every few minutes and scrape the sides with a spatula.

There you have it!! Wasn't that easy?!

 

 

 

Add to your tray of choice. You do not have to have a specific tray for making baby food. I've found these are nice since they have a cover, each spot is 2 oz. of puree. This batch made over 25 servings!!!

There you have it!! The babies like to watch and in between steps it gives you lots of time to clean or work on other things in the kitchen. These steps above can be used with a variety of other foods too. Want to make carrots? Just peel, chop and start with the same steps!! It really is easy and you know your child is getting quality ingrediants. 

Stay tuned.. Next we're going to be making pumpkin puree! Great for those fall recipes and also my little man's favorite puree!! 

Have a great day everyone!! 

Love, 

From the Kangas Family.

The Pumpkin Parable

The Pumpkin Parable

(Based on Liz Curtis Higgs' book)

Today I want to tell you a story. It's a special story called a 'parable'. A parable is an earthly story that has a heavenly meaning. In the Bible there are many parables that Jesus told so we could understand His teachings better.

This is a story about a farmer and a pumpkin.

The Farmer lives wa-a-a-a-ay out in the country. On his farm He has a pumpkin patch.

Pumpkins are really special. They start out as small oval seeds that grow into big, orange pumpkins. The farmer plants the seeds, waters, and cares for the pumpkin vines and patiently waits as they grow.

Finally by October there are big, orange pumpkins in his pumpkin patch! Some are tall and lean, some are short and round, and some have bumps and lumps. But they are all pumpkins and all were planted and cared for by the Farmer.

One day the Farmer chose a pumpkin for a special project. He brings it in from the field and washes it off. You have to be careful with pumpkins; they're tough on the outside, but if you drop them, they break into pieces!

The Farmer takes a large knife and cuts a hole in the top of the pumpkin. Inside there is yucky, slimy pulp waiting for Him. That has to go! He cleans it all out and throws it away - never to be seen again.

After that He gives the pumpkin a new face! He cuts two triangles for eyes, a square for a nose, and a big, wide smile!

Then He does something really special. He puts a small white candle down inside the pumpkin and lights the wick.

How that pumpkin glows! As people pass by, they see the smiling pumpkin and smile back. They know that once again the Farmer has taken a simple pumpkin and changed it into a glorious sight!

http://www.amazon.com/Parable-Pumpkin-Patch/dp/0785277226

I love you..... THIS MUCH!!

 I watch Miss Alexa during the week.

Today we decided to make a craft for her mom and dad's offices at work :). So first we started with some scrapbooking paper and traced Lex's hands we folded that over and cut the tiny hands out (she is only 3 1/2 months so they are little!) After that we folded some scrapbooking paper and attached them to the hands. They sure turned out cute!!!

Attempting to show how TINY Miss Lex's hands are!! She is just a peanut!! 

Hope you all are having a great Tuesday!!! 

Love, 

From the Kangas Family :)

The Helmet Diaries

Many of you know, and those of you who do not. My little guy wears a helmet.

For those of you who do not know, he has a condition called torticollis. Basically as a baby one side of his neck was very tight causing him to always lay his head on the same side.

Now as a result of laying his head on the side like this he developed what is called a plagiocephaly. Essentially a flat spot on his head.

While at our two month Well Child check up our pediatrician noticed this and referred us to a physical therapist. Matthew went every two weeks to see Miss Amy, and we did stretches to his neck about 5 times a day.

Did you know, infants are supposed to have at least 45 minutes a day of tummy time?

Even with the extra tummy time (Matthew was up to about 4 hours of tummy time a day) and stretches and PT sometimes the flat spot doesn't totally correct. So you go to the orthotist. After a few appointments you leave with a shiny new helmet!

Matthew wears his helmet for 23 hours a day. He'll have it on for about 3 months total. So if you see a little one wearing a helmet like this don't stare. Just smile!! 

The Cry it out Method

So I'm sure all of you parents have heard of the "Cry it out" method for getting your child to sleep. This is usually suggested when your child is no younger than six months. I didn't do this with Olivia, it was hard for me. I felt the desire to run in and pick up my crying baby and cuddle them in my arms. But this time with Matthew I have been determined to give it a real try. We have been using this method for a few weeks now and wow!!! It really works!!! 

So here it is, our cry it out routine.. 

Create a bedtime routine that works for your family. For Matthew he needs a bath every day with his helmet. So we'll give him his bath then his night time bottle.

Next, lie your baby down, put his blanket on, give him a kiss. Then here is the hard part.. You leave.

Here's the deal, he is going to cry.

And Cry...

And Cry.... 



Now this is the time when you are going to want to rush in and pick him up and kiss him and hold him. But resist. It's the hardest thing in the world... I know. Put a timer on the microwave for 5 minutes... 

And wait.. Do dishes, throw a load of laundry in, go get the mail, read a blog! Do whatever it takes to keep you out of the nursery for five minutes. 

Next go back in and sooth your baby, rub their stomach, talk to them in a soothing voice. Then put their blanket back on, and leave. 



Now REPEAT.

This might take a few nights. I assure you it is harder on the parent than it is the baby... But before you know it, you'll be going in less and less and finally you will just lie your baby down and they will go to sleep! - This is the stage we are almost at with Matthew. Usually he'll just roll over and fall asleep which is amazing!! There were a few of the night where I physically had to leave the house to prevent myself from going to rescue Matthew, Joel was home of course!!! But it's very much worth it! Stick to it and you'll have a sleeping baby in no time!! 


Now Olivia.... That's another story .. :) 

All things fall and a great new recipe! :)

So it's been quite the crazy summer. Things are finally starting to get under control now that it's fall. Olivia is off at school Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. Still trying to figure out what is going on with Olivia's sleeping. She's averaging about 4 hours in a 24 hour period. Definitely not enough for a growing preschooler. We have an appointment with a pediatric nuerologist tomorrow and we are praying for some answers.

Matthew is growing up fast. Getting so big! He's off at an appointment with Daddy for his helmet. He has one tooth and he's getting another. He has started crawling, backwards!! It's so cute! I can't believe how quickly this summer went by.

I started watching a little baby named Alexa a few weeks back. She is just darling. She's still getting used to being away from her mommy. Matthew has been loving having a baby to play with! I'm looking forward to getting a new roof soon!! If you would have told me 5 years ago I would be this excited to get a new roof I would have called you crazy. Oh what getting older does to you! Olivia was eating watermelon yesterday and was complaining about the white seeds that were in it. Made me think about when we were kids and having to pick all of the seeds out of regular watermelon!

Fall is so beautiful this year!!! The colors are just perfect! I tried this new pumpkin recipe and it was AMAZING!! I'd definitely recommend it! Hope you all are having a great fall!

Recipe: Pumpkin Dump Cake

Ingredients

• 1 15 oz can Pumpkin Puree
• 1 10 oz can Evaporated Milk
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 3 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 1 box yellow cake mix
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter melted
• 1 cup coarsely crushed graham crackers or pecans
• 1/2 cup toffee bits (optional)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Spray a 9×13 baking pan lightly with cooking/baking spray
3. In a large bowl combine the pumpkin, evaporated milk, sugar, eggs and pumpkin pie spice. Stir to combine.
4. Pour into your prepared pan.
5. Sprinkle your entire box of cake mix on top, followed by your nuts or graham crackers and toffee chips.
6. Pour your melted butter evenly on top.
7. Bake for 45-50 minutes until center is set and edges are lightly browned.

Quick notes

Serve with ice cream or whipped cream.

Homemade By Holman: Apple Cinnamon Monkey Bread

Homemade By Holman: Apple Cinnamon Monkey Bread: I've posted a monkey bread recipe before and its my favorite "special" day breakfast treat. But when I saw this recipe on the blog What's ...

I can't believe it's been six weeks since my little Matthew was born

So I haven't posted in a while. Life has been crazy. Matthew came into this world on March 23rd at 4:47 in the morning. I can't imagine him not being in my life. Our family feels so complete now! He is a fantastic baby. Much more mellow than his sister, who is doing fantastic with him by the way. She only wants to squish him 10% of the time. But she is getting better every day. I've been recovering well. At first it was hard for me to just slow down, rest and try to recoup. But here we are 6 weeks on Wednesday and I have made it to officially getting back into the groove of things! For those of you who don't have kids post-partum you are supposed to wait 6 weeks to start doing any type of major activities. For example: Working out! Before Matthew was born I was going 6 x/ week. I have been missing the gym so much! I cheated only one time this week and went in doing an easy 30 minutes on the elliptical. It was so nice to go a normal pace but wow.. These six weeks have really taken me back a bit!!!

On Thursday I have an official welcome back to the gym with a goal consulation with one of the trainers. This will be a great start back for me. I'm looking forward to the workout routine she's going to make for me. It's always hard guessing which machines you should be doing.

In other news the "nesting" bug hasn't left.. I've still been organizing, decluttering like crazy. My garage is looking great!! On Wednesday we are finally going to be getting rid of the 25+ years of paint and other hazardous material cans that were accumulated in our garage before we moved here. It frees up about 10% of my garage with just doing that!

Joel and I have been working hard at Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. We have been doing SO WELL to! I can't believe the progress we have made in the past four months! It truly is amazing! Along with this program we decided to sell Joel's car and go to a one car family. .This was a big decision and I was worried about it at first, being I'm at home with the kids and that was my only sanity to the outside world.. It has been the BEST decision for our family. Life is so much simpler. When we want to go somewhere during the day when Joel is at work, we WALK! We live so close and not to mention have 6 strollers.. It forces our family to be active and it is fantastic! Not to mention including gas, car payment and insurance we are saving about $500/month! You have to live like no one else so some day you can live like no one else!

Well.. I hope everyone is having a great week!! Back to the day!

Love,

The Kangas Family

Yes.. My stomach definitely didn't fit with the tray table in the airplane...

You know you are pregnant when....


Okay so it just BARELY fit with the tray table, but I couldn't breathe with it down.. 29 weeks today and it was surreal this morning packing up at Dads' lake home that next time I came back I would be doing it with two kids! Now that probably won't be for a while but still it was a huge eye opener!! 11 more weeks until we meet our baby boy or girl!

Olivia and I had a great trip to Georgia. She did remarkably well on the flight there even with the almost one hour we spent on the Tarmac due to de-icing. Although she found it was very "awesome" it still tacked an hour onto the flight which was not so awesome towards the end. Nevertheless it was a good flight. We arrived and got the rental car for the weekend (My first time renting a car!!). Olivia really wanted to get a red one, like Lightning McQueen and we ended up with a Kia Soul. It was definitely a BOX but I was surpised with what a great drive it was. It was basically an SUV without the truck. Something that would never work for our particular situation (we most certainly need trunk space!). But it was a great ride!!!

There was SNOW in Georgia.. Yes, snow. There was actually a good amount of it too! Which was incredibly weird to see. Towards the end of our trip however it was warming up, about 50ish on Sunday which felt like heaven!! Olivia was able to play outside for almost two hours. She just loved it.

We were up this morning at 5am, 4am central time and haven't really stopped since. The flight was smooth on the way back and everything went off without a hitch! It's nice to be home though!

I was welcomed back with a painted bedroom!!!! It looks amazing! Our bedroom was the last room in the house to be painted. I was really hoping it would get done before the baby came and Joel pulled out all the stops (one his one weekend off a month) to get it done!!! The walls were so dirty before and had the same texture as sand paper, the wall paper border had been stapled, you heard me.... Stapled in addition to being glued to the wall. It was just gross. It's amazing to have it done!! I hung some pictures today but wow... It's just amazing!!!! Thank you hunny!!!

Now it's on to yet another week. Some goals of the week. Finish the dresser, it's all prepped, just needs to be painted. Do a deep clean of our bedroom, now that it's so nicely finished we need to declutter it!! And finish Christmas Thank you's.. I am so terrible, it's already the 17th and although I have a number of them done, they have not been sent out yet.

I hope everyone had a great weekend! God Bless!!!

Love,

The Kangas Family

Lessons learned

So my hiatus from Facebook all in all was only 2 weeks. Sounds silly being so short but I truly learned a lot. Within a few days of being off Facebook the urdge to constantly check my Facebook was gone. Within another week the idea of thinking "great that should be my Facebook status" was gone. It's amazing how much time can go to a silly social networking site. My life got to the point where it was revolving around Facebook, and the "FACE" that I was trying to uphold. In the past few weeks I have spent close to zero time on the computer. I found myself one day spending a lot of time on the What to Expect When You Are Expecting Website. This was when I realized that it doesn't matter if it's facebook or something else. If it becomes too much of a focus in your life you can lose yourself.

My comeback to Facebook came with a few changes. One of those was I deleted 30 some Facebook albums. I had a LOT of pictures that were on Facebook going back to 2005. I'm a wife now, a mother, some of those pictures did not need to be on there. Another change I made was I turned off notifications for all of the various Facebook things. Now when someone sends me a message, or an event invitation, or just replies to ANYTHING I don't get an email causing me to jump on to Facebook to check a response.

The last few weeks I have also gotten a LOT done around the house. The biggest of these was taking ALL of the baby clothes from Olivia from random bags, small boxes and organizing them into bins according to size. It was such a HUGE undertaking. Everything was quite a mess from two moves. Another benefit of this organization is my husbands car fits in the garage!!! Do I wish we would have tackled this project when it wasn't 10 degrees outside, of course! However it is what it is and wow is it so nice to have done!! On all of the boxes I pulled the boy clothes/neutral clothes and put them at the top of the bins. So if we are having a boy.. We know exactly what we have for the different sizes. I was happy to find that we did have a good amount of gender neutral things for 0-3 months and newborn.

It is getting so much closer to the baby coming. These last few months have really skyrocketed quickly with the Holidays and such. January hasn't been too much different. Olivia and I are going to Georgia with my dad today. We're mostly packed up and ready to go. I'm really looking forward to a weekend where it isn't below zero windchill. I was packing yesterday and said to Joel, "What does 40 degrees feel like." I seriously cannot remember, lol. I'm ready for winter to be done. Yes, it just started. Yes, we have two more months at LEAST left. But for the record I'm ready to be done with Winter. Olivia and I spend so much time outside when it's warmer outside. The backyard, the park, the zoo.. It's just amazing. I'm glad that she'll get to ride her bike around the lake house. Also really looking forward to swimming!!!

Anyways.. Life is moving so quickly. We're getting the house ready for the baby. Our crib arrives at the end of the month. It's all happening!! We are so excited!!

Have a great weekend everyone!

God Bless, The Kangas Family.

Not as hard as I thought it would be.

So it's my second full day without facebook. I honestly thought it would be a lot harder than this. After about the first day the compulsive I need to get on there and see if anyone replied, if there is anything new, passed. Yesterday I found myself gravitating to the WTE website under the expecting in April category. I quickly realized that by replacing my facebook screen time with another avenue of it would be doing the same thing. Shortly after I logged off and haven't returned since. I wish I could say the state of my house is better because of the time spent off Facebook. But to be honest sleeping has been nonexistant for me these last few days. I imagine if I was spending large amounts of time on Facebook the state of my house would be worse. So i guess that's something.

Olivia is fast asleep lying with her princess Belle doll in the family room. It really is adorable. Today I was able to take the most relaxing bath ever. It was amazing. It's nice to get a little break in the day here and there. It's so cold out there, Olivia and I went to church this morning and the walk was just brutal inside! I have a feeling it's going to be like this for a while. Hey, it is only January!! There are still at least three full months of winter left (YUK!!!).

Other than that there is not much more to report. We ordered our crib today! I can't wait for it to come!! It's beautiful!!! It doesn't come for another month or so, so I'm glad we ordered it when we did. If I get the energy in this next few days I'd really like to tackle the dresser and get it moved upstairs. I think I finally figured out how I want to arrange the nursery. Olivia and I rearranged the play room downstairs and it works much better!! She's been spending a lot more time playing in there. It's nice to have a playroom that is utilized opposed to just holding toys.

So that's all I know... Going to go pour myself a cup of coffee and enjoy a little quiet time before the peanut is awake!

God Bless and Happy New Years!

Love,

The Kangas Family